


Evermore

by Heart_Seoul_Soshi



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 17:34:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14141049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heart_Seoul_Soshi/pseuds/Heart_Seoul_Soshi
Summary: Five years after being imprisoned in the crumbling ruins of a lost fortress, a blue-haired glimmer of hope comes walking through Mal's castle doors





	Evermore

History told her that people were abandoned and cast away because they were monsters.  
  
No one ever told her you could be abandoned and cast away for not being monstrous enough.

It had been decades since long nails were ever claws, but even still it was claws caged around her arm and the deadly sharp beak of a raven flying on guard above that kept Mal from fighting for freedom as her mother dragged her across the Isle of the Lost. She still kicked, and screamed, screamed for her life the entire journey into the darker wilds of the island, but it was all in vain. She was still screaming as the drawbridge of the Forbidden Fortress sealed her in, and the thorny vines grew not with magic, but with minds of their own, ensnaring her within her mother’s old castle and isolating her miles and miles from any other living soul.

Diablo may have been his villain’s familiar, but he was still animal, and as such, possessed softer and more merciful tendencies. He struck a deal with the vultures circling the high towers of the fortress, who intended to wait patiently while Mal mentally and physically wasted away. They were not to harm young Mal, but to aid her, serving as her one and only conduit to The Isle’s center, bringing back food and sustenance for her in her banishment.  
  
The first thing Mal did after being thrown to the cold stone floor was fight her way to her feet and desperately climb the stairs to the highest tower, watching from the windows as her mother began the trek back without a single glance over her shoulder.  
  
As Maleficent left her worthless disappointment of a daughter imprisoned for life without a single remorse.

For five years Mal was alone, nearly going mad on several occasions with only the sound of her own footsteps echoing off the walls and into her ears. Her only hope, her only ray of light, was in the foolish belief that maybe this banishment was her salvation. Maybe Maleficent never intended it to be for life. Maybe she only intended for it to twist Mal, break her, strip away everything until only the absolute worst was left and she became the monster her mother wanted her to be.   
  
The beast.  
  
Her only hope was that someday, she’d come skulking out of her cage and take a place at her mother’s side, the new worst villain in all the lands, the most evil of them all. For five years she hoped that every grating footstep carried her closer to that wild madness, just to be granted her freedom.

On her twenty-first birthday, she thought she’d finally done it.  
  
Seconds and days and minutes and weeks all bled together to her, she couldn’t tell eleven at night from a Saturday in June. With each year, she never would’ve even known it was her birthday if the vultures hadn’t swooped in with a gift at the behest of Diablo. The first year, it was a pencil, snapped in half. Mal only remembered because of the way she’d worn it down to an absolute nub, sharpening it on a jutted rock and scribbling drawings and patterns into brick until there was nothing left of it for her to hold. She couldn’t recall what any of the other presents had been, just that they signaled the day of her birth.  
  
And on her twenty-first birthday, she began to hear voices.  
  
This was it, she was certain of it. She’d finally snapped. Lost that one lingering shred of humanity that was the thin line between girl and villain, Mal and monster. Mother had planned it perfectly, a twenty-first birthday was just the occasion to make the triumphant return to the lone city on The Isle and begin her reign. Mal delighted in hearing those voices where others would have only feared, but fear was not quite so far removed from Mal herself. For she wasn’t hearing voices. She was hearing _a_ voice.  
  
“…Hello?”  
  
It bounced through the entirety of the cavernous fortress, all the way up to Mal even in her tallest tower. She let a sneer and a snarl curl her lips as reality hit, as she donned one of her mother’s left-behind old capes before racing down the endless staircases the way she’d raced up them the very first day she became trapped. It was there, down in the castle foyer, that the voice stood. Where Mal stood at the rusted wrought-iron railing of the grand staircase with wild eyes blazing in the darkness.  
  
“Who are you?!” she barked.  
  
The mistress of a castle couldn’t stand for intruders.  
  
The girl hadn’t seen her in the dark, and jumped terribly at the sudden sharpness of her voice. But her own mother had raised her to be cordial and polite in the presence of power, and even if that power didn’t belong to a prince the way her mother always hoped it would, the girl still held fast to her teachings.  
  
“…My name is Evie. I’m the Evil Queen’s daughter,” she bowed her head even though unsure if her host was looking.  
  
A lighter. Mal was suddenly remembering that was another one of her birthday gifts, and fished it from her pocket to set a nearby torch burning. And there was the girl named Evie, flickering in the light.  
  
“Why are you here,  _Evil Queen’s daughter?”_  Mal again let herself get taken over by a snarl, always trying to make that descent into monster.  
  
“…Running away,” Evie hung her head with a shy little laugh. “Or trying to, at least.”  
  
Laughter. Small, shy, or otherwise, it was a sound that Mal was taken aback by. Physically so, slowly retreating from the railing like the noise was poison she couldn’t let drift too close.  
  
“I thought this castle was abandoned. It sure looked like it from the outside,” Evie went on.  
  
Mal noticed the backpack then, hanging off Evie’s shoulder by only one strap because one strap was all the Auradon hand-me-down had.  
  
“Well it’s not,” Mal snapped.  
  
“Who are you?” Evie questioned.  
  
Mal hoped that in another five years she wouldn’t have an answer for that.  
  
“…Mal.”  
  
Evie’s eyes went wide. Her gasp was so sharp it seemed to pierce Mal’s ears.  
  
“You’re Maleficent’s daughter!” she realized.  
  
“I am not!!”  
  
The three words were reflexive. Instinctual.  _Primal._  Something no conscious part of Mal meant to say but still ended up saying nonetheless.  
  
“…I’m sorry,” Evie wasn’t sure what she was apologizing for, but apologized nonetheless. “Hey, I didn’t mean to intrude. I just…I couldn’t take another day under my mother’s rule. I really thought I could escape from her. But I guess…this is just a sign that I can’t.”  
  
Evie’s next laugh was sad. Mal had forgotten that laughter could be sad.  
  
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Evie apologized again. “I’ll go.”  
  
She turned, stepping out of the torchlight glow without another word. And Mal recalled the two day journey across The Isle, recalled it where defense mechanisms had long-since blocked out Mal’s screaming and pleading as Maleficent’s claws tugged and yanked her the entire way to the Forbidden Fortress.  
  
“…Stay. Here. For the night. Leave tomorrow.”  
  
Sometimes Mal spoke like a beast. Habit. It wasn’t like proper grammar was needed when talking to one’s self for five years.  
  
“…What?” Evie asked over her shoulder.  
  
“It’s a long way back. Stay here and rest.”  
  
“You don’t mind?”  
  
Did she? Mal couldn’t tell. She just muttered a disinterested grunt, her signal for Evie to follow her up the stairs.  
  
There wasn’t much resting to be had, for Evie couldn’t let herself sit in a dusty chamber bedroom when there was such a curious hostess to learn all about. Everyone had known of Mal, daughter of Maleficent, and everyone had known when Mal, daughter of Maleficent, suddenly disappeared. Maleficent had shrugged. Waved away the inquiries. Offered up excuses ranging from “Maybe she tripped off the docks and drowned” to “It  _is_ called the Isle of the  _Lost,_ after all”. It was clear that Maleficent didn’t care, and as such, neither did the rest of The Isle’s denizens. But Evie had cared. She remembered the little girl with purple hair that mother wouldn’t allow at her sixth birthday party, and it always made her uneasy to think that the little girl had drowned, or wandered off alone into the wilds of The Isle.  
  
So she joined Mal for dinner that night, and admittedly did most of the talking, but Mal didn’t exactly have a hard time listening. Conversation. Actual, human conversation. She was shocked she still carried any shred of the skill at all after five years without another human soul.  
  
“…So she  _imprisoned_  you here??” Evie repeated in horror. Mal hadn’t said much, but she’d at least outlined her story.  
  
“I’m not bad enough,” Mal looked down and picked at the fuzzy food the vultures had brought. She really wasn’t even sure what it was.  
  
“…I’m so sorry.”  
  
“Stop saying that!! Villains don’t say sorry!!” Mal slammed a hand down on the creaky table.  
  
Not even meaning to. Not even meaning to repeat some of Maleficent’s own words back to Evie. And with that, Evie had quickly and quietly excused herself, leaving Maleficent’s dining hall and taking the stairs to her room for the night.  
  
She was gone by the time Mal woke up the next morning, backpack and all. Only then did it suddenly dawn on her that the vultures hadn’t brought a twenty-first birthday present. Oh well. Just another 364 days to get past. Mal had no concept of time, she could do that standing on her head.  
  
She had no concept of time, but it felt like about a week before she heard a voice that wasn’t hers trailing all the way through the fortress.  
  
“Mal?”  
  
Like a dog raced at a doorbell, Mal again abandoned her tower to bolt to the lowest floor, stopping again at the dangerously rusty railing of the grand staircase.  
  
“You!” she growled. “How do you keep getting in here?!”  
  
The drawbridge was closed. The thorns were vicious.  
  
“I climb around the side of the fortress to get to the front. Use the rocks. Did you ever know Jay, Jafar’s son? He taught me how to climb. I’d use it to escape my mother’s castle late at night and try to find some freedom for at least a few hours before sunrise.”  
  
Clever. But Mal wasn’t interested in clever, she was interested in intruders encroaching on her solitude.  
  
“Why are you back?”  
  
Evie again had the not-so-trusty backpack over her shoulder, dropping it to the stone floor and stooping over to unzip the biggest pocket.  
  
“Maleficent threw this out years ago. I don’t know how I lucked out and got to it before the rats did, but I hung onto it. I couldn’t stand the thought of it going to waste.”  
  
Evie wrestled the so-called trash in question from the backpack and held it up for Mal.  
  
“…My sketchbook,” Mal gasped, almost dropping her torch.  
  
Far worse for the wear—maybe  _a few_ rats got to it before Evie did—but her sketchbook irregardless.  
  
“I love fashion, I draw my own designs,” Evie prefaced her procurement of some colored pencils from the backpack with that statement. “I thought I’d bring you your sketchbook and some of my supplies, something to keep you occupied while you’re here.”  
  
Cautiously, like a nervous animal, Mal came down the staircase to meet Evie by the massive front doors. She handed over the torch, and Evie handed over the sketchbook. Days could have passed as Mal opened the crinkled pages and flipped through it, she never would have known. Her fingers traced over the feel of the paper, the minuscule grooves where her pencil dipped just a little too hard, or where an unkempt paintbrush left just a little too much grit in the color it painted. Memories. A book full of memories.  
  
“…Thank you.”  
  
Mal didn’t recognize her own voice as she said those words. And for a second time, she thought of the two-day trip Evie had made for a simple delivery and again invited her to stay before she started back. Evie once more took her up on the offer. But before she left the cobwebbed dining hall that evening to get some sleep, she cautiously approached Mal.  
  
“…Would it be okay if I came to visit you?” she wondered. “I really can’t sleep well at night knowing you’re out here all alone. I don’t care if your mother is mistress of all evil, no one should have to endure this, Mal.”  
  
“Too far. Too long,” Mal spoke of the trip to the Forbidden Fortress in her blunt, beast-like speech.  
  
“But I don’t mind!” Evie quickly said. “It’s a chance for me to get away from my mother, someplace she won’t follow. Someplace she can’t hurt me.”  
  
Mal looked up at Evie from her chair, eyes reflecting back more emotion than she’d ever know.  
  
“She hurts you?”  
  
“…Well, not physically, but yes,” Evie sighed. “She hurts my feelings. She hurts my heart. Everyone just tells me to get over it, that I should be lucky she doesn’t lay a hand on me and what she does to me isn’t nearly as bad as it could be, but—”  
  
“You can visit.”  
  
Mal scooted her chair back along the stone floor, stood up from it. Kept a tight hold of her sketchbook the way she’d kept a tight hold of it all afternoon and all evening—like an Isle child clings to a one-eyed teddy bear with busted seams. She didn’t say anything else to Evie, didn’t say a goodbye or a goodnight or anything of the sort.  
  
She just retired to her tower, and took hold of a pencil.  
  
Two days for Evie to return to the opposite edge of The Isle, and two days to make it back to the Forbidden Fortress. Like clockwork. Mal seemed to slowly remember how time worked now, and every fifth day her ears were perked, waiting for Evie to announce her presence in the castle. She brought books, handmade clothes, salvaged paints and paintbrushes, bigger and better things than the vultures ever brought Mal on one lone day out of the year. One day, Evie’s backpack brought wads of torn towels, and her hands brought empty buckets.  
  
“My mom may force me to act like a princess, but she still trained me to do all the things she made Snow White do around the castle,” Evie explained after a brief trip to the sea’s edge below the fortress’s rocky outcropping, filling the buckets in the process. “Mal, I know this place is a mess, but that doesn’t mean you have to keep it a mess.”  
  
“It’s my mess,” Mal said defensively, crossing her arms.  
  
“But just think how much better you’d feel if it was only a little bit cleaner in here.”  
  
Well, Evie had already gone through the trouble of getting the water. It wasn’t like Mal could say no now. So this visit in particular had the two of them cleaning the castle; dusting away those cobwebs, scrubbing the stone floors, washing the grime and grit off the windowpanes. It was unbelievable how much daylight came into the fortress now that the windows were free of their thick layers of dirt. Mal didn’t even have to light a torch in the middle of the afternoon anymore.  
  
Sometimes, Evie only stayed a day. Other times, her visits were longer. But with each one, Mal focused less and less on becoming a monster, but more and more on becoming a friend.  
  
“Evie, come here.”  
  
Mal had met her at the bottom of the grand staircase on one particular visit, where Evie barely had the time to drop her backpack before Mal was tugging her along by her sleeve.  
  
“What is it?” Evie giggled at Mal’s uncharacteristic urgency.  
  
Mal stopped only long enough to ask the question.  
  
“Will you pose for me?”  
  
Evie’s eyes lit up.  
  
“Like for a painting??” she asked back, excited even without hearing the answer.  
  
“…A pencil drawing,” Mal sheepishly corrected. “I don’t have the right colors for you.”  
  
Evie wasn’t deterred in the slightest, the way Mal worried she might be.  
  
“Of course I’ll pose for you!” Evie assured her with a smile.  
  
A smile that Mal amazingly enough returned without a hitch. She hadn’t given one in five years, after all. Maybe even longer; she couldn’t remember the last time she thought to smile at Maleficent.  
  
“Doesn’t the Evil Queen wonder where you go?”  
  
It had been months since a failed runaway had showed up on Mal’s doorstep, and months of her returning to said doorstep without fail.  
  
“Of course she does,” Evie answered as she and Mal idly walked one of Maleficent’s corridors. “And of course she forbids me. But a queen needs her beauty sleep, and she can’t watch me  _all_ the time.”  
  
“You sneak away when she’s asleep,” Mal realized.  
  
“Just like I always have. Everytime I go back, everytime she screams and raves at me for escaping, I keep thinking that I’m old enough to just leave her, to just walk out the front door and never return…but I don’t have anywhere else to go. Except here, of course.”  
  
“Except here,” Mal nodded.  
  
They turned a corner down one of the hallways Evie loved, one of the ones with a high arched ceiling and now-clean windows running all down its length.  
  
“…But what I really want to do is go to Auradon,” Evie practically whispered, like invisible ears all over The Isle were just waiting to hear such blasphemous talk and strike down anyone who dared to utter those words.  
  
Auradon. Mal and her mother were meant to conquer Auradon one day. It was why she had been trapped in this Forbidden Fortress. But the fortress was only a prison within a prison, The Isle itself was the real jail cell.  
  
“They don’t let our kind in Auradon,” Mal said.  
  
Our kind. Like Mal was that animalistic beast she’d longed to become.  
  
“I know,” Evie sighed, not needing to hear it. “It’s only a dream. But that’s okay, I still have you.”  
  
Mal bristled when Evie stopped to suddenly hug her, bristled from the foreign feel of such interaction. She hadn’t just gone five years without feeling a hug—she’d gone her entire life. So how surprising was it that she melted easily into Evie’s arms, that something inside her somehow knew how to hug Evie back, even sway her back and forth a little on her feet?  
  
“And you have me, Mal. You know that, right?” Evie asked. “You aren’t alone here anymore.”  
  
“…I don’t feel so alone anymore,” Mal softly admitted.  
  
Who in the world did she think she was, allowing herself to be soft? Someone lost not on The Isle, not in banishment, but in Evie’s embrace. Someone who didn’t ever want to leave that embrace.  
  
Whenever Evie was gone, something in Mal’s chest hurt. She didn’t know what, and she didn’t know why, but everytime she retreated to her tower after bidding Evie goodbye, only the drawing of her tucked protectively in a drawer of Maleficent’s old armoire could alleviate the strange ache. Mal would sit at the edge of her bed, tracing with both her eyes and her fingertips the features she’d captured so perfectly on the page. The eyes that both pierced as well as protected, and the smile that Mal couldn’t even find words for. In just five more days she’d see that smile again, this time for real. It would take her breath away and make her heart skip a beat the way it tended to do lately, symptoms worrying on their own that left such a warm, pleasant feeling in their wake that Mal couldn’t let herself be concerned.  
  
If she had any sense, she would’ve been concerned. Concerned that she couldn’t be a monster because she was falling in love with Evie. But alas, Mal didn’t have any sense. She was raised by Maleficent, and therefore raised without it, but in the grand scheme of things, it was alright. She didn’t need sense when it came to Evie. All she needed was the smiles, the hugs, the sparkling in impossibly brown eyes. Things that kept returning to her again and again.  
  
The first time Mal led Evie all the way up to her room in the tallest tower, they were both scared. Mal because that room had seen the most brutal sides of her, her darkest days, and Evie because she knew it. They were both afraid of the ghosts that might be lurking in the walls, and the last thing Mal wanted now was to have Evie scared away by old ghosts, not when she’d endured everything else Mal had to throw at her. But there was no more fear for Evie when they finally made it to the top. Maleficent’s ghost wasn’t here. Neither was Mal’s. It was just Mal herself, the same Mal Evie had known all this time.  
  
They both sat on Mal’s bed that evening after a lackluster Isle dinner, the two of them reading side by side. Evie with a book of Auradon history, Mal with a biography of the queen and princess of a nearby kingdom called Arendelle. Evie, out of curiosity, briefly abandoned her own reading to lean in close and read over Mal’s shoulder instead, learning about the royals when they were just two little princesses. Mal’s heart flipped in her chest when Evie came in that close, but she liked the way it felt.  
  
“…I knew you when we were little, Mal,” Evie murmured.  
  
“You what?”  
  
“Well, I didn’t  _know you_ know you, but I knew of you.”  
  
“…Maleficent’s daughter,” Mal muttered under her breath, looking away from Evie and hardening her gaze on her book.  
  
“No, not Maleficent’s daughter. I didn’t know that’s who you were. We were six, and I only knew you as the little girl with purple hair that I wanted at my birthday party.”  
  
Certain words and concepts were foreign to Mal’s ears.  
  
“…You  _wanted_ me?” her voice was so small. The delicate “tmp” as she closed her book shut was even a louder sound.  
  
“You looked so interesting, and I was so curious. I thought we could be friends. But my mom wouldn’t hear of it.  _She_  knew who your mother was.”  
  
Mal took careful note of that, the way Evie said  _“She knew who your mother was”_  and not  _“She knew who you were”._  
  
For it was clear now, more than ever, as Mal sat and listened to the story, that Evie had never once seen her as Maleficent’s daughter.  
  
Evie had only seen her as Mal.  
  
That very first day that Evie had fallen into her life, she’d asked Mal who she was. Mal hoped that one day she wouldn’t be able to give an answer. But here she was now, with Evie having fallen asleep beside her, lulled by the pages of her book. Mal was ever so careful as she made Evie comfortable on one of the pillows and tucked the covers around her, ever so careful as she blew out the lantern light and laid down beside her. Evie’s steady breathing was delicate, like a breeze. Something soft and rhythmic that had Mal being quickly lulled to sleep as well. And as it overtook her, as mind and body alike were pulled down and down into a land of dreams, she knew exactly who she was.  
  
She was Mal. The girl who loved Evie. And she never wanted to forget it.

* * *

It was the eve of Mal’s twenty-second birthday, and Evie’s visit would miss it by two days. But that was alright, Mal had never even mentioned when her birthday was, anyway. She didn’t want Evie to feel bad should the pattern of her trips cause her to miss it. Mal was far from lonely, admiring her first and most favorite sketch of Evie the way she did in her absence, tracing the features on the paper the way she longed to trace them in real life. Just two more days, and she’d greet Evie with a hug and a smile, so happy to see her.  
  
Happy. Both Mal and the Forbidden Fortress had something in common—they had never once seen happiness in their entire life. But that was another thing Mal and the fortress had in common—they were both dark and different things before Evie had come along. Only two more days, and she’d be back.  
  
So imagine how Mal must have felt when she heard footsteps climbing the tower staircase, when her ears picked up the sound just in time to turn a bewildered gaze to the doorway and find Evie standing there.  
  
“…E??” Mal was on her feet in an instant.  
  
“Hi Mal.”  
  
There was that smile, just as Mal always pictured it, and the hug she could stay lost within for a lifetime.  
  
“Evie, what are you doing here?” Mal reluctantly pulled away to look her over as if she were only an illusion, a trick of the mind.  
  
But she could feel Evie in her arms. She was no illusion.  
  
“I had to come right back, I had to tell you,” Evie took Mal’s hands.  
  
The first time Mal had felt electricity since being locked miles away from it on the desolate end of The Isle. Evie guided her to the bed, and they sat down on the edge of it.  
  
“Tell me what?” Mal asked. She mirrored Evie’s own ecstatic smile, unable to help herself.  
  
“I’m going to Auradon.”  
  
Oh, how Mal suddenly wished the Evie beside her really was just an illusion.  
  
“…You’re what?” Mal choked out the words with a very dry throat.  
  
“The prince of the kingdom has just become king. His first royal decree was to partially lift the ban and give the children of villains a chance to live in Auradon! Mal, it’s a dream come true!!”  
  
“…You’re leaving.”  
  
“No,  _we’re_ leaving! You’re a villain kid too, your banishment is over!”  
  
Mal pulled her hands free. They now felt so very cold. She stood up from the bed. Her legs now felt so very numb.  
  
“I can’t leave, Evie.”  
  
Evie’s face fell drastically, her smile wiped blank in just four words.  
  
“…What are you talking about?”  
  
The rest of Mal grew cold. She wrapped her arms around herself before she could shiver.  
  
“The Isle may answer to Auradon, but I answer to Maleficent. And Maleficent answers to no one.”  
  
“Mal, you—”  
  
“She put me here!!” Mal shouted, those long-forgotten monstrous tendencies rearing their ugly heads. “Dragged me screaming from my home and literally threw me in this fortress! Do you think I would’ve stayed here going insane for five years if I could’ve just walked out this whole time?? The drawbridge is only a drawbridge, but those thorn bushes are  _alive,_  Evie. They have a mind of their own. They answer to my mother too, and they won’t let me leave.”  
  
“Forget about some stupid old thorn bushes!” Evie jumped to her feet. “I’ll come back with a weed whacker if I have to!”  
  
“Evie, no,” Mal pointed out her south window, towards the front of the castle. “Those things are the closest this island gets to magic. My punishment is meant to last a lifetime, and they’re here to see that it does. I can’t escape from here.”  
  
Mal hated it, the visible distress clouding Evie’s beautiful face.  
  
“…Okay, fine. Then I’m not going to Auradon.”  
  
Her distress settled into determination, a firm nod like the conversation was over and done with right then and there. It most certainly was not.  
  
“Yes you are,” Mal came back with equal, if not stronger, determination. “Auradon is your dream, and you’re not staying here on this rock just for me, I won’t let you.”  
  
“Mal, you don’t deserve this!”  
  
“And neither do you!!”  
  
Tears. In Mal’s eyes. A wet, painful heat that blurred her vision.  
  
“…Evie, thank you, for everything that you’ve done for me. Every night you spent, every book you brought, every story you told. You’ll never know how much it all means to me. You’ve made this place okay for me, and now it’s time for you to move on and find your own place. This is your chance to be free from your mother, E. You finally have somewhere to go.”  
  
“I have a place here.”  
  
“But it’s not a place where you belong. You belong in Auradon. You were never cut out to be a villain.”  
  
“You weren’t either,” Evie argued, harshly rubbing her watery eyes. “But of the two of us who weren’t meant to be villains, who’s the only one stuck in a Forbidden Fortress?”  
  
Mal hung her head.  
  
“…That’s just the way it is.”  
  
Evie took a step closer to Mal, another argument ready and waiting to cut loose. Mal didn’t give it that chance.  
  
“Evie, please. You’ve done so much for me. Not once have I done anything for you… _please,_  let this be the one thing in my life I do right.”  
  
Mal cried. Actually cried. The tears spilling over and down her cheeks. If her mother could see her now.  
  
“…Mal, I couldn’t sleep just knowing you were here by yourself in this prison. How am I supposed to sleep in Auradon knowing I abandoned you on The Isle?”  
  
Mal smiled the saddest of smiles. A year ago, Evie reminded her that gestures reserved for happiness could still be sad. A year later, Mal was calling upon those lessons.  
  
“Only one person in my entire life has ever abandoned me, Evie. And you aren’t her.”  
  
“I might as well be, if I just leave you here to—”  
  
Now it was Mal who valiantly came forward, clasping Evie’s hands in her own.  
  
“You will  _never_  be her,” she insisted.  
  
Evie paid such attention to the jade that was swimming beneath those pools of water.  
  
“…I can’t leave you,” she whispered.  
  
“You have to. I’ll be okay. My one gift to you,” she tucked a hand under Evie’s quivering chin. “A promise that I’ll be okay.”  
  
How could Evie stand there and let Mal make the wrong choice for her? The same way she slipped her arms around Mal for one last time—with her broken heart knowing that Mal wouldn’t budge. Evie shook, burying a sob into the crook of Mal’s neck.  
  
“Mal, this isn’t fair…”  
  
“No, it’s not. But it’s right. If I let you stay here with me, for me, it’ll be the most selfish thing I ever do. Villains are selfish. Monsters are too…and I’m not a monster, Evie,” Mal cried harder. “All I ask from you is this one last thing; don’t let me be a monster.”  
  
“…You were never a monster to me,” Evie whispered in her ear. “You were always Mal.”  
  
“I know. And for that, I owe you everything. Let this be the way I repay you.”  
  
Evie had to pull away from her, to wipe the stinging from her eyes.  
  
“…Evie.  _Please.”_  
  
There were only three other syllables in the English language that carried as much weight as the ones Mal just uttered did. But those syllables were absolutely forbidden on the Isle of the Lost.  
  
“…Auradon has armies,” Evie said when she cleared her vision enough. “I’m taking every single one of them and I’m coming back for you.”  
  
“Don’t. Don’t give either of our mothers a chance to get up to their old tricks,” Mal managed that sad laughter.  
  
“I’m coming back for you,” Evie assured her nonetheless.  
  
Mal shook her head.  
  
“No. When you reach those Auradon shores, don’t ever look back. Forward is the only way for you, E. Just tell me that you’ll always look forward.”  
  
“…I will, Mal. I’ll look forward to the day I see you again.”  
  
It had been a long while since Mal had this much trouble keeping up with time. When she and Evie shared that final,  _final_ hug, she felt it lasted for months. When Evie kept her palm pressed to her lips to stifle uncontrollable sobs, Mal felt like her tears ran for years. And when Evie walked out the door, keeping with Mal’s wishes for her to never look back, Mal felt like she stood and stared into that empty doorway for an eternity.  
  
One time, Evie had sung to her. A quiet little tune as she sat sketching designs in the high tower and saw Mal having trouble falling asleep. Mal never even knew the words, never even recalled the tune, but always she longed to return the favor and sing to Evie. She was just always too nervous. Funny how such an impassable thing, a fear she couldn’t seem to get over, mattered absolutely not now.  
  
 _“…I was the one who had it all. I was the master of my fate. I never needed anybody in my life…I learned the truth too late.”_  
  
Far, far too late.  
  
 _“I’ll never shake away the pain, I close my eyes but she’s still there,”_ Mal hugged herself tight again.  _“I let her steal into my melancholy heart…it’s more than I can bear.”  
_  
Her feet moved before the rest of her body was even aware, going to the window. She’d lost track of the time. Evie could have been long gone by now for all she knew, but still, she had to try and get one last glimpse of her.  
  
 _“…Now I know she’ll never leave me, even as she runs away. She will still torment me, calm me, hurt me, move me, come what may,”_ Mal threw the window open, peeking her head out and straining to see that familiar blue.  _“Wasting in my lonely tower, waiting by an open door…I’ll fool myself she’ll walk right in, and be with me for evermore.”_  
  
Nothing. Evie had either gotten too far ahead of her, or not far enough. Mal looked to the door, open wide into the spiraling stairway. Maybe, just maybe, she could catch up.  
 _  
“I rage against the trials of love. I curse the fading of the light!”_ Mal’s feet had never carried her so fast before.  _“Though she’s already flown so far beyond my reach, she’s never out of sight.”_  
  
She was nearly at a run by the time she’d descended far enough in the fortress to come across one of the corridors. One of Evie’s favorites. With the arches and the windows and her awestruck sighs etched into every stone.  
  
 _“Now I know she’ll never leave me, even as she fades from view.”  
_  
The grand staircase and castle foyer were so close from here, she had almost made it.  
  
 _“She will still inspire me, be a part of everything I do…”  
_  
For the first time since they’d closed on her five years ago, Mal, with all her strength, was the one to open the massive wooden doors, tugging at the rusty handles with all her might.  
  
 _“Wasting in my lonely tower, waiting by an open door…”  
_  
An open door blocked by a wall of thorns, ever so frightfully with minds of their own. The thorns had never existed here, right at the castle doors. They’d sprouted beyond the drawbridge, at the end of the long stone walkway that Mal could see only through the gaps in the creeping tangle of vines. Evie had gotten out, all right. And the thorns had grown immediately in her wake to ensure that Mal wouldn’t dare to follow. She hung her head, a few brief seconds so dead silent that she could hear the  _plip, plip_ of her tears falling onto the stone at her feet.  
  
 _“…I’ll fool myself she’ll walk right in.”_  
  
Evie was gone.  
  
 _“And as the long long nights begin…”_  
  
Mal was alone.  
  
 _“I’ll think of all that might have been.”_  
  
But she held Evie tight within her heart. And nothing; not evil thorns, or Maleficent, or the ravages of time, or even eventual madness could ever take that away from her. Ever.  
  
 _“Waiting here…for ever…more.”_


End file.
